


Visions and Revisions

by Tammany



Series: Mr. Spence's Repose [7]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Sherlock deduces, Sherlock's POV, Spies & Secret Agents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-31
Updated: 2015-03-31
Packaged: 2018-03-20 12:22:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3650184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock attempts to wrap his mind around Mycroft. In love. With Lestrade. Who loves him back.</p><p>The poor boy probably needs a paracetamol. Or a good stiff shot of Mycroft's Glenfiddich. </p><p>This is NOT an action/dialog sequence. This is internal observations and deductions, and Sherlock struggling with his own understanding of things, and a few clues to upcoming reveals.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Visions and Revisions

Sherlock rushed through the town and down the little almost-rural lanes to reach Mr. Spence’s cottage. He knew he was working on a deadline. Well…more than one, come to think of it. But he knew in his gut that his brother and Lestrade weren’t going to loiter all that long in Lestrade’s flat. If he was going to learn anything helpful, he needed every minute he could squeeze for nosy-parker detection. “Leg work,” as Mycroft put it. The nitty-gritty of hands-on invasion of privacy.

It was less than a year since Sherlock had last come out to visit his brother—his brother who changed his habits with a speed suited to the movement of tectonic plates or the slow realignment of constellations. Yes, Mycroft could move quickly and decisively when he had to—witness his death and rebirth as Mr. Spence, after all. But even that was underlaid by months—no, years—no, decades of careful thought and preparation, allowing Mycroft to snap into new patterns that appeared to the ignorant to arise full grown, spontaneously springing into existence like Athena leaping from the forehead of Zeus.

Mycroft, though, was never spontaneous. Not really. It was an illusion...sleight-of-hand, convincing only to those who misunderstood the bedrock of Mycroft’s personality. Mycroft worked from understanding and knowledge developed over time, tested over years. Like the seemingly “spontaneous” freehand drawing of a genius, or calligraphic scrawl of a shodō master, the gesture was only the tip of the iceberg, the terminal moment of an action rooted in a lifetime of practice.

Or, to put it another way, Mycroft never “winged it.” Not really. He knew too much to qualify.

But Sherlock would have sworn that his relationship with Lestrade wasn’t…couldn’t be…

He was certain it had no obvious years of investment backing it. Instead, it looked like the real thing: a spontaneous, unpremeditated development in Mycroft’s staid, premeditated life.

That was confusing. Worse, it was frightening. Worse still, it was obvious that it had consequences Sherlock had not foreseen in the event Mycroft had to abandon this incarnation and take up yet another new cover identity.

He didn’t know if Mycroft and Lestrade would resist being separated or not. His stomach clenched thinking about it. The thought that his older brother and his mentor would throw good sense to the winds out of romantic impulse was appalling. Yet the idea that his brother and mentor would not resist—would casually walk away from something that far too obviously meant far too much to them? That was disturbing in other ways. Ways Sherlock hoped very much he would not have to think about.

So he bombed along the little lane, clinging to the warrant card he’d pick-pocketed from Dimmock, determined that he would not be stopped by any small-town police officer out to defend the populate from homicidal driving. He swung the car into Mycroft’s drive.

Mr. Spence’s drive.

Or, no…

He got out of the car, already scowling, face a thundercloud of disturbed dismay.

Less than a year, he thought. He’d been away less than a year. In Mycroft’s world, even in Mr. Spence’s world, a year meant next to nothing. Seasons would come, and seasons would go, but the bricks and pavers of Mr. Spence’s gardens would stand as they were, unchanging. The plantings would alter only so much as nature and a reliable landscape service dictated. Sherlock would have sworn that if he saw a greenfinch on a branch when he left Mr. Spence’s house, it would still be there on the same branch when he returned months later. The same birdbath would sit on the same paved circle in the same bed of perennials.

He unfolded himself from the little sedan, eyes taking in the back garden. It was not Mr. Spence’s back garden—or not Mr. Spence’s alone. There were raised garden beds—beds crammed with flourishing vegetables and herbs.

The detective in him listened as the scientist named off the pharmacopeia of a kitchen garden. Dill and sage, rosemary and rue, thyme and parsley and borage and betony. There were burgundy-ribbed greens hinting at beetroot under the soil line. Frilly carrot tops. Long deer’s tongue lettuces.

In the corners of the beds were stuffed pansies and daisies and zinnias. In the shade against the entry porch, there was a pot of lush double tuberous begonias, their succulent, seductive blooms blazing color that could be seen across the yard.

And there were wind toys. Mycroft—Mr. Spence—would never have bought wind toys. Strange sculptural copper spirals turned lazily from the eaves of the cottage. Wind chimes sang—high, delicate chimes and deeper ones with voices like somber gongs. A windsock like a dragon fluttered and filled, held high by a long fiberglass pole like a fishing rod or the support strut of a tension-supported tent.

There was a shed in the back corner—not a little, lean cupboard of a shed, but a bouncing baby garage of a shed. And there was a jury-rigged shower of sorts—a hose sprayer supported by brackets from the shed, suggesting that Lestrade stripped down and sluiced off the first layer of dirt in the back garden before he went into Mr. Spence’s civilized interior abode.

Moving like a one-man giraffe stampede, Sherlock darted for the back door, now certain he had to see more. He scrambled for the keys and tumbled into the sacred precinct of his brother’s second life.

No. No, no no. It was just as bad here. Fruit in a bowl sat on the table. The counters and sink suggested a constant coming and going—not filthy, but not the rigid monastic order Mycroft himself tended to impose on his living space. In the sitting room there were jewel cases holding CDs, DVDs, and to Sherlock’s stunned amazement, computer games. A second monitor had been purchased—a large HD monitor set up to receive video from Mycroft’s central computer tower. The monitor sat where two men could watch from the sofa.

Even the sofa was different, with extra cushions and warm throws.

By the time Sherlock had raced through the house, upstairs-downstairs-in-my-lady’s-chamber once, he knew too much.

Lestrade and his brother were not yet lovers. There were too many signs that the guest room was used by a solitary man whose privacy was respected. The box of condoms in Mycroft’s dresser had not been opened; the plastic stood unbreached. Sign after sign established that, like Sherlock and John in the days when they’d shared Baker Street, they shared the home but not the bed. And yet, unlike Sherlock and John, there was that constant, startling suggestion of Lestrade’s influence on Mr. Spence’s life. It wove through everything.

A Terry Pratchett novel on his brother’s e-reader. A single clematis from the trellis over the pasture gate in a shot-glass by his favorite work station at the front window. There were toys in Archie’s box that Mycroft—or Mr. Spence—would never have purchased. A scattering of cut-glass teardrop prisms caught the sun in Mr. Spence’s upstair’s bedroom, casting rainbows over his plain white walls. A note lay on his brother’s bedside table, in Lestrade’s erratic scrawl.

“Making brekkers. Text me when you wake up and I’ll throw eggs and rashers in the pan for you. Looking forward to today. Only fishing I ever did before was pulling Sherlock out of the Thames.”

There’s something too personal about the little note. Not a phone text, not a post it stuck on the door. A note, written and brought into Mycroft’s room as he slept…by someone who had not woken him. Mycroft slept lightly. There were few people his subconscious would treat as safe to sleep through…

Sherlock’s heart thundered. He sat in the chair in front of Mycroft’s bedroom window, looking out over the back garden.

Sentiment. He can hear Mycroft’s voice drawling it in bitter, ironic tones. “I don’t do friends.” He’d turned it into a swear word. His lonely brother—the hermit of Whitehall. The man Moriarty had nicknamed the Iceman, a title as fitting and yet horrifying as his nickname for Sherlock: the Virgin.

Sherlock shut his eyes. No matter his affection for The Woman, it was that nickname that had ensured the night he’d spent with her after he’d rescued her in Karachi. It was that nickname that had pushed him to meet with her other times, accepting her education as fair trade for the life he’d held her find again—her own “Mr. Spence” experience. It was that vicious, too-precise nickname that had ensured he’d dally with Janine…enough so to convince her entirely of his interest.

He was no longer a virgin, but he’d learned with pain and discomfort that, sex or no sex, he was possessed of a virgin heart. It meant something different now than when he’d first heard the name on Irene’s lips, though. He’d learned that he loved too intensely, and cared too little about the desire part of it all, in the end. The love and friendship, though—they mattered.

But not for Mycroft. Never for Mycroft. Never for the brother whose tolerances were so sensitive that he lived like the boy in the bubble, protected from the very contagion of life, allowing in only Mummy and Father and Sherlock.

Until now.

And Lestrade….

Sherlock sighed. The silly man. The best of the Met’s talent, but ordinary, in the end. A good man—and good at being a man, somehow. Lestrade, who in the end seemed to have the words “Good Bloke” branded on his heart. Sherlock had known for years that Lestrade was bisexual—but had also accepted as perfectly logical that the other man had opted for an ordinary heterosexual marriage—a marriage that had failed through no failing on Lestrade’s part that Sherlock could determine. Since then the man had dated some, gone with out more often, and seemed to simply stop caring since his retirement. A chaste and dignified old age had seemed his likely fate.

Falling in love with Mycroft? Mycroft who didn’t do feelings? Idiot. Fool. Moron…

Only Mycroft had fallen back.

How did that happen? How COULD it happen?

Sherlock didn’t understand. Sherlock hated not understanding. He hated more having a complication like this come up now, of all times. He had a plan to try to see through to successful completion, and a brother to relocate in a safe, secure new identity. He’d known he could cut his brother loose from the half-wild cat, and from the elegant but not especially charismatic chestnut warm blood. He’d worried a bit about Archie, but had even been willing to bend pure strategic perfection and let Mycroft keep his silly little dog. But Lestrade…

Lestrade was a rather large gap in the planned security precautions, now, wasn’t he?

They could dye his hair, Sherlock thought, half giggling in frantic concern as he tried to resolve the complications. But Lestrade was so…so…so Lestrade. As distinctive in his solid, salt-of-the-earth way as Mycroft. Trying to keep the two paired would be like trying to hide a camel and a kangaroo in the middle of a London pavement. They’d stand out. They’d draw attention to themselves just as they had at the lake.

No. It wouldn’t work. Couldn’t work.

Sherlock stood, and prepared to go back downstairs, already marshalling his arguments why his brother was going to have to separate from Garvin….Garth….Gabe….

Lestrade. Mycroft had to leave Lestrade—had to. And if he complained, Sherlock was just going to have to hit him with his own damned platitudes. All lives end. All hearts are broken. Yadda yadda, blah blah, get over it, Mycroft. You don’t do friends. You don’t do LOVE.

And then he heard the thub-thub-thub of the approaching scooter. He went to the window and looked down as Lestrade pulled the big thing into the drive, complete with pet side car and a guitar case strapped to Mycroft’s back.

Sherlock knew Mycroft could ride a scooter. And of course he knew Mycroft was good on horseback. He’d never seen his brother ride pillion before. Even with the guitar case strapped on tight, he sat straight, leaning easily with the angle of the bike, his hands resting lightly on either side of Lestrade’s waist. There was so much grace and comfort and trust in that posture—as much as when his brother threw his heart over a fence in a steeplechase event. As though he was where he should be. He knew his center of gravity, he knew his seat, he knew his driver.

When Lestrade pulled in and brought the scooter to a stop, Mycroft dismounted in one easy, fluid motion, then steadied the bike for Lestrade, who instantly knelt and released Archie from the scooter side car. The little dog scampered across the yard, sniffing and exploring, checking his territory.

Mycroft said something to Lestrade. Judging by their focus, he said something about the dog. Lestrade said something back, face serious and drawn. Mycroft nodded, his mouth tight and his face stone—not blank, but that forced control that refuses to explain anything.

Mycroft’s face was like a prisoner, stating name, rank, and ID number over and over again, refusing to admit the obvious—that he was dying by inches. Cut off from hope.

They stood so close together—not touching, but they were bound.

Sherlock frowned and turned away from the window, angrier and angrier. It wasn’t fair. Mycroft, who never changed, had changed. His rules had changed. His everything had changed.

They aren’t lovers, Sherlock told himself. It wasn’t as though he’d be separating lovers. But then he thought of all the times he and John had been forced apart, and knew that was a stupid excuse. He and John loved each other, whether they desired each other or not. It was the love that mattered. The trust. The ability to occupy territory in each other’s very souls.

And they would have become lovers, Sherlock thought. The unopened box of condoms gave silent witness to Mycroft’s own expectations—or at least hopes. So did Lestrade’s words in his back garden earlier.

He looked out the window one last time, at two men watching a little dog with such sorrow and loss they might have been at a funeral. Sherlock sighed—a huffy, frustrated sigh that would have spiked the charts if anyone had been recording it. He reached into his pocket and drew out his mobile.

He pulled up the contact number for the one ally he’d quite intentionally not mentioned to Mycroft. Some things Big Brother was better off not knowing. He began to text.

_Mayday. We have to overhaul the plans. SH_

_Why? A_

_Either he’s got to stay here—or we’ve got to figure out how to include his lover and his Scottish terrier._

There was a long delay. Sherlock wasn’t surprised. He waited, watching as his brother and Lestrade lingered in their back garden together, enjoying what they had to think was one of their last moments with their silly little dog. After a time, the phone blinked back the new message.

_You’re joking. Right? A_

_Nope. SH_

_Sherlock, we have to talk. A_

Sherlock wasn’t surprised at that, either.

 _Give me ten minutes to get out of here and I’ll call you,_ he typed.

Then he hurried down the stairs just in time to meet the lovebirds coming in, and to offer to take Archie out for a long walk.


End file.
